Salon, resident count squirrel, cohorts as 'customers'

Sunday

If you give a squirrel a peanut, it will want more; it will keep coming back, eventually scratching at the door.

The squirrels on Faircrest Drive know where to find peanuts, and they know exactly how to get them - and it seems they have their human counterparts expertly trained.

"They don't knock on the door, but they might as well," Kayla Wiggins, a stylist at the Faircrest Salon, 6 Faircrest Drive, said of the nut-snatching visitors.

And when one resident squirrel in particular fluffs up her fur and puts her paws together, silently asking for something to eat, Wiggins and the other stylists can't say no.

Most customers know her, but she takes others by surprise. She has become the unofficial mascot.

Manicurist Mary Lou Lundquist knows her as "Bushy."

"You never know when she'll come tracking over here," Lundquist said.

Welcoming wildlife

Raymond Holloway calls himself "the squirrel man."

He has trained squirrels in the neighborhood to eat out of his hand. His front yard is littered with empty peanut shells, a present from the squirrels that took them out of his hand.

Teaching a squirrel to eat by hand wasn't an easy task.

When Holloway moved to his home on Faircrest Drive more than 20 years ago, he noticed there were no animals around. Rabbits did not hop into his yard and squirrels did not scurry about.

Then his neighbors put in fruit trees. As the trees grew and started to produce fruit, squirrels started to show up.

"I kept thinking, 'When the fruit is gone from the trees, what do they eat?' " Holloway said.

He started throwing peanuts at a squirrel that was running around. It took a while for it to figure out that Holloway was the source of the peanuts.

He kept throwing the nuts, each time tossing them closer and closer to himself. He finally was able to drop the peanuts near his feet, and the female squirrel, whom Holloway named "Nuts," came close enough to take them.

Nuts became more of a pet than a wild animal, eventually becoming so accustomed to Holloway that she allowed him to pet her.

New set of squirrels

After about two years, Holloway could see Nuts dragging herself up the drive. He knew Nuts wasn't going to survive. It didn't surprise him when the squirrel no longer showed up for her meals.

"The miracle is that the babies started hanging around," Holloway said.

One of the babies is the squirrel that Lundquist calls Bushy, but Holloway named her Peanut. She now has offspring of her own - a third generation in the line of peanut grabbers.

Holloway and the women at Faircrest Salon have learned a lot about squirrels since Nuts and Bushy became the neighborhood pets.

* Don't feed them raw peanuts, or there will be peanut plants all over the yard.

* Don't feed them Brazilian nuts. They can't open them.

* They will eat bread and pizza, but not pepperoni or meat.

* If there are multiple squirrels, make separate piles of food.

Both Holloway and the stylists at Faircrest Salon keep a bucket of peanuts nearby. When they hear the scratching at the door, they might snap a photo or share the unique experience with a friend or customer, but they also know just what they're supposed to do: deliver a handful of tasty peanuts.

"They've been a lot of fun," Holloway said.

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